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gollum123 writes "The US Supreme Court has removed restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar in training exercises near California. The ruling is a defeat for environmental groups who say the sonar can kill whales and other mammals. In its 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said the Navy needed to conduct realistic training exercises to respond to potential threats. The court did not deal with the merits of the claims put forward by the environmental groups. In reinstating the use of sonar, the top US court rejected a lower federal judge's injunction that had required the US Navy to take various precautions during submarine-hunting exercises. The Bush administration argued that there is little evidence of harm to marine life in more than 40 years of exercises off the California coast. It said that the judges should have deferred to the judgment of the Navy and Mr Bush. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said overall public interest was 'strongly in favor of the Navy.' 'The most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals,' Chief Justice Roberts wrote. 'In contrast, forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet.'"

remind me whenever in history the "dug in a wall" strategy worked. It didn't worked for China. Didn't worked for France. Didn't worked for Romans, nor for the Aeduii. Radars didn't stop bombing raid, nor chains submarines, nor the gulf war smoke interceptors. (has to be said that worked for England the use of interceptors to block German bombers)

how sonars are different? they are indeed useful in submarine combat. but provide me a war scenario on which submarine warfare has more importance in getting closer to the conflict resolution than tactical ground attacks, bombing, or hurling long range missiles from one continent to another.

yes, submarine are cool, useful, stealth and so on. But future is unforeseeable and the only thing history teaches us is that the generic dug in tactic doesn't work. most of submarine task could now be performed by long range missiles. True, submarine could be used as stealth carriers, transport or to build safe supply line, so you absolutely need them for this role and for countermeasure to prevent the enemy to use those tactics on you, but they're far to be the most important strategic asset of a war.

or, in other terms, you need planes because the enemy has, you need nukes because the enemy has, and you need submarine because the enemy has, miss to match any of the enemy capabilities, and you have a big hole in your defence. no more, no less. Attacking and most importantly winning however, needs a lot more than submarines. (and a problem itself is to define what a victory is)

>>>provide me a war scenario on which submarine warfare has more importance in getting closer to the conflict resolution than tactical ground attacks, bombing, or hurling long range missiles from one continent to another>>>

You have got to be kidding. Have you never studied WW2? Submarine attacks waged against Japan effectively cut-off the nation from access to natural resources, oil, even food. Germany did the same thing to Britain during WW1. In Britain's case the anti-sb destroyers w

yes, submarine are cool, useful, stealth and so on. But future is unforeseeable and the only thing history teaches us is that the generic dug in tactic doesn't work. most of submarine task could now be performed by long range missiles.You do realize how close England was in being starved out due to the U-boats right? And submarines aren't dug in the wall, nor are sonar nets. And you mention radar not stopping bombing raids, then grant that interceptors helped stop the German bombing raids, well part of that was due to radar providing warning of where the bombers were. As for the "dug in a wall", not every siege in history was successful(see Vienna).

I think your forgetting that we aren't living in the past. You see, Intel can get you information about where other people's missile bases are, all anyone will have to do is either disable them or strike outside their range. Now enter Submarines, they move, aren't detectable from the surface in most cases and you have no idea were the other side's missile bases are.

So lets fast forward to modern special opt insertion tactics. We send seals, rangers, Green berets, and other tactile personnel in on subs, The

On one hand I feel the need to explain to you that there is no unified front of communist environmentalist hippy liberals who are all out to screw up whatever you support. On the other other, I realize that holding such mistaken and backwards beliefs is probably one of your biggest weaknesses when it comes to influencing society, so why not let it be?

no, to the whales this is like a F22 breaking the sound barrier 1000 foot above your house. [http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/sonar.asp] The sonar the Navy uses is extremely high powered and can cause hurt, just like a sonic boom of a jet smashing windows over land. If those were decibels in air 140 is illegal in public as it causes physical pain and permanent hearing loss, 235 db in air causes your ears to bleed... if they were doing this on the street (loud enough to be legally ban 100 miles away!) the

A house of extremely dubious quality might result in a little damage when overpressure reaches somewhere between 10 and 15 pounds, so your average house, of normal quality, is probably not going to sustain any damage at all. The whole windows breaking thing is almost entirely a myth for the types of supersonic aircraft you would ever encounter from regular suburbia through to the arse end of nowhere in the backwoods.

Submarines rarely make use of 'active' sonar, that defeats their purpose. (I was Navy so I have some professional background here) You might want to study sonar (and RADAR for interest) a bit more if you think 'more power' is the solution to better 'vision' under water. It ain't so good sir.

A house of extremely dubious quality might result in a little damage when overpressure reaches somewhere between 10 and 15 pounds, so your average house, of normal quality, is probably not going to sustain any damage at all.

giving the fact that most of the groups trying to stop this are irrational most of the time I would suggest the Navy only be permitted to test sonar on land.

I read some of the quotes. The fact remains that no harm was shown to marine life in the area the Navy uses for testing. Harm was shown elsewhere in the world but not specific to the claims presented here. Throw in the fact that according to one of the protesting groups the NRDC said the use of high- intensity sonar could disturb or threaten 170,000

Previous SONAR systems did not have enough strength to penetrate shallows depths with lots of clutter. Much of it would return from clutter or be reflected away from the source. This results in a greatly diminished signal return and very unlikely to generate a target. Not surprisingly, this is where diesel subs tend to operate. In old doctrine, this wasn't an issue because diesel subs were so noisy, SONAR wasn't needed to "spot", identify, and track.

These days, the latest generation of diesel subs are often more quiet than the quietest of nuclear subs. As a result, there are only two options available. One, never allow NATO subs near shallow water. Which really isn't an option. Two, create new SONAR systems which can penetrate these areas and hope to get a return. This means more power.

Furthermore, you're logic is completely flawed in that the old, lower powered SONAR systems actually place the crews are much higher risk than the newer, higher power systems. This is because when the low power systems "ping", more than likely they won't see the diesel sub and more than likely they sure won't hear it. Yet if they are looking rather than listening, they are pinging anyways, which means the unseen and unheard diesel sub already knows exactly where the NATO sub is at. This means sure death if the situation gets nasty.

In short, your position is uninformed and not based on the facts on the ground.

You need to consider more than one side of an argument if you are a supreme court judge?

That sounds positively un-american if you ask me. I was pretty sure it's just about following what te president wants? Abortion, defense, environment, all seems to be "Commander In Chief! Sir! Yes Sir!"

That's the view that I am getting from outside the US anyhow. No offense.

I believe they were saying that the damage from the navy being unable to use the sonar was so much greater than the damage that the environmentalists were claiming that it doesn't matter. One of the chief responsibilities the government has is to protect its people, and without training on the sonar the government can't do that.

That's not for the Supreme Court to decide. Their job is to decide whether a law is constitutional.

It is up to the legislature to decide how to balance freedom and national security by passing laws. Now, should the law be challenged on the basis of its constitutionality, then that's a different matter. If the environmentalists are challenging Bush's executive order privilege and how far Bush can go in the capacity of Command in Chief, that's yet a separate matter. But this doesn't seem to be the case. I don

Their job is to decide whether a law is constitutionalNot quite. It's their job to interpret the entirety of the law, of which the constitution is the highest authority. If the law merely grants departments broad powers, in vague circumstances it does become the job of the Supreme Court to determine whether those circumstances apply. You can blame congress for passing crappy laws for that.I too am having a hard time finding out exactly what laws this case was decided based on (without reading the whole decision [supremecourtus.gov]). Here is some more info [inversecondemnation.com], admittedly in favor of the Navy.

It sounds like the actual laws being questioned changed over the duration of the trial. First they were charging that Navy hadn't filed an environmental impact study (which they hadn't although they have studied the heck out of it), which the law "requires" but the law lists no punishment for not doing so. Furthermore, the Navy already had an exemption (from at least some laws), and got another one after the trial started dealing directly with this law. It sounds like after all was said and done this turned into something like the "EPA is required to regulate CO2" lawsuit, requiring the Court to decide based on the powers and responsibilities of that agency.

The article failed wrt details. There was no specific law. The environmentalists claimed the Navy failed to "prepare an environmental impact statement," supposedly violating the National Environmental Policy Act. It seems the court was saying you can't apply an law broadly directed at civilian activity to the naval exercises. The current Court prefers to make limited decisions. If there were a law specifically regulating the Navy's use of sonar I think they would uphold it, but, absent any law, this case is similar to arguing that the Army can't practice shooting because the bullets are full of lead.

One of the chief responsibilities the government has is to protect its people

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm also not a religonut, but one thing I thing humans have sadly lost in the age of reason, with the loss of real old style religion instead of the nutjob variety infect large amounts of the US and Middle East today, is the sense of guardianship of nature. This idea that the governments responsibility to maintain a threat to other nations is higher than the human responsibility to look after the natur

I can't believe you got modded up so high./. really lacks an understanding of global finance. In fairness, it is a tech site, so....

All I am saying is that people have been "predicting" the demise of the US capitalistic system for 100 years. Yet, here we are. We made it through the depression. We made it through the 70's and we made it through every single hiccup in global finance since it began. Over that time, we have amassed more wealth than any other country in the history of the world. I am correct that the US has more wealth than other nations - that is indisputable. The reason this matters is because we have a lot of "slack" to make mistakes (like you are seeing on the front pages right now)

Bury your head in the sand but here ya go [wsj.com]. Here's [wikipedia.org] a list of per capita GNI. The US is #7.Here's [wikipedia.org] another list, based on GDP. Please notice the US is compared to the ENTIRE EU -- not just individual countries.

Seriously, if the US wants to "work itself" out of this, we just reduce the Social Security commitments we've made. People don't seem to grasp that the government can pay any debt it needs to. Whether there is the political will to do it is another story. This isn't a story of the US not being able to pay its debts....that is nowhere near the case right now.

I mean, this isn't even close. Why do you think Treasury prices have been pushed up so far over the last 3 months? People around the world have been FLOCKING to the safety of US treasuries. People around the world still view the US as the safest place to invest your money. If they were junk, as you indicate, they would trade as junk and nobody would want them. Your claim is testable and easy to verify - just go look at the US Treas charts. After looking for about 2 seconds, it is easy to see that you are just plain wrong. IOW, you have no idea what you are talking about here....

Call me when the US defaults on it's bonds. That is news. Until it happens (and it won't), what you posted is just idle wanting. I understand where it comes from, I do. But it is not based in any rational evidence. It's simply emotion based on what you want to happen.

By the way, I don't know what country you are in but take a look at what has happened to your own country's bonds. Do you think they are a safer or riskier investment than US bonds right now? The world market for bonds says, not only is the US safer, but they are THE safest of all countries.

This is nowhere near 1929. Totally apples and oranges comparison. Things worked WAY differently back then than they do now. Additionally, your insinuation that US Tbills are backed by "toxic debt" is woefully simplistic. US Tbills are backed by 200+ years of the US paying it's bills.

Lastly, I really wasn't kidding about betting against us. If you are soooo sure of your position, then you can put your money where your mouth is and if you are right -- you will be set for the rest of your life. Please watch out for the bodies of your predecessors, however.

I didn't respond to your questions because your questions are naive and show a poor understanding of the basics.

But, since you asked for it, here ya go - put your flamesuit suit on and send the kids to bed:)......
1) Why, why, why you asked: because capitalism has imperfections. So does the US. Mistakes happen but they are far from fatal (which is what you implied earlier). If you haven't noticed, the US govt is working pretty hard to address the problems we have right now. But lets be clear, they are minor problems compared to the last 100 years of global finance. This isn't Argentina. This isn't Russia. This isn't 1890. This isn't 1929. The US is nowhere - and I mean nowhere - near defaulting. Hell, they didn't even default during the Great Depression and we a nowhere near those levels right now. Again, there is evidence for this because ppl are still buying US bonds. It's that simple. If the US was at risk, you'd see an entirely different price for those bonds -- much much lower.

2) The truth is you don't have any wealth.: Are you kidding? Is this really a serious question? Re-read that WSJ link I gave you. Then go over to the WorldBank and read up on the stats and numbers. You are, simply wrong.

3) Only debt. Tens of trillions of dollars of debt. And no way of paying it back.: Preposterous. Again, the US has never defaulted on it's debt. Never. I have no idea how you can claim they have no way of paying it back. Again, this statement shows a lack of understanding of the basics. Go read up on some productivity numbers. Go read up on US GDP and it's components. Compare to your own GDP. Compare to Iceland and while you're there, take a real good look at what happened to Iceland's bonds. Go find a historical trend for those bonds and look at the difference. They are orders of magnitude different than the US. Why? Because the US financial size is orders of magnitude larger. We have lots of debt, yes. But we have MORE than enough ability to pay that debt back. We just have to shift a few resources, which is what you see playing out on the front pages and within the halls of our govt....

4) Some nations have already said they consider US Treasuries to be junk: You are wrong. Here's a chart [yahoo.com]. If they were junk, you would see yield rates > 10%. You do realize there is a market where they sort out who is junk and junk is not, don't you? I mean, it's right there in black and white for the entire world to see.

5) Like 1929 - when for every sell there was a buy. Keep dreaming. Your economy is headed for a swift and horrible collapse. And what will you do then?: I will be just fine because I have a higher than 2nd grade understanding of what is happening. A graduate finance degree will do that.

Look, I am not saying everything is rosy. I am simply saying your predictions of the collapse of Western Finance have been heard before. Lots of times throughout history, in fact. And every single time - they have been 100% wrong. Not a little wrong....a whole lot of wrong.

1. I think you didn't take into account that the government was quite wealthy in 1929. Now we are trillions in debt (some estimates point as high as 100 trillion in future liabilities).

2. Define wealth. I would say that wealth is having money that does work for you. We don't have any real money (just imaginary money in the form of derivatives--multiple quadrillions of them). Instead we have debt, which we have to work just to maintain (something like half of your income tax dollars go to paying int

As far as I can tell the yields for US bonds are sharply dropping at the moment

Methinks you need to quit while you are still whole. You have a serious misunderstanding here. It' so far offbase it's like you are sitting there telling me the sky is red. This is finance 101 stuff.

Here's why: Yields fall because the price paid for the bonds goes up (which drives down the yield because the coupon amount is fixed). Which is actually what *I* saying and the opposite of what you were saying. I have bee

So many fearmongers seem to forget that Russia has a population of only 170mill and dropping. The only threat from Russia is bullying of smaller nations around them and their nuclear arsenal. It doesn't matter how much the US' credit rating weakens it'll still have it's nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to counter that, the nuclear threat is always present but can always be discounted from these types of scenarios because if it happens we're all fucked, if it doesn't happen we're all carrying on as is.

Russia and China aren't in any way allies, they have common goals in the security council sometimes of keeping the US subdued but they also have their own border disputes with each other and really have little in common enough to be as close allies as Europe is to the US for example.

Russia really isn't the type of threat the US needs to worry about in terms of launching submarine based attacks unless for some reason the US becomes an enemy of the likes of Europe also because Europe combined has a vastly bigger set of armed forces than Russia and has more to fear if it goes against the US and hence the West in general due to it being on their doorstep.

Russia also has a lot of internal strife, whilst South Ossetia and Abkhazia worship the ground Russia walks on due to their incursion into Georgia what a lot of people miss is that North Ossetians and Ingushetia and similar would love nothing more than Russia to be distracted in a real war so that they can lop off a sizeable chunk of Russia's lower borders, there are a few other areas of Russia that would rapidly follow suit.

China is in a similar situation, Japan, India, South Korea all have interests in supporting the US if China went aggressive and you could be sure again that Europe would join in. The other similarity with Russia is that any aggression by China would rapidly push away Taiwan, Tibet and possibly even Hong-Kong from their grasp. Even Pakistan has border disputes with it. At the end of the day, China couldn't launch full scale military action elsewhere because it'd lose it's grip on so many regions and find itself a nation that was suddenly a whole lot smaller and a whole lot weaker.

There's an instant fear that because China is so big it's a threat, but whilst it is bigger than any individual nation it's not bigger, nor would it be bigger even with it's allies than the nations whose interests run counter to it and their allies.

There is really no threat from China and Russia even with a weakened US, the Western view has too much support from too many strong nations and should there be such thing as another world war, even a lot of the border-line nations would easily drop their distaste with the US to support the West in this kind of scenario, whilst Venezuela, Bolivia and so forth may support the Russians/Chinese you can guarantee Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico would all side with the US. The Middle East would largely be a stalemate with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Israel siding off against Iran, Syria and potentially Lebanon.

The assault by Russia into Georgia was to make a point, the US has established bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, on Russia's Southern borders, in Japan to Russia's East and now in Poland et al. on Europe's Western borders and in Greenland and in cooperation with Canada over the arctic to it's North. Russia knows it's surrounded, it knows it can't break out but with Georgia it also knew it had a sudden chance to make a point and send a message to other smaller nations like Georgia warning them to not allow anymore US influence on it's borders.

China and Russia are simply outmanned and outgunned in conventional warfare by a massive amount regardless of the US's strength in the world. The Western ideal whilst regularly slagged off simply has too much core support at the end of the day because so many nations know that the alternative is simply much worse. It is for these reasons that China and Russia simply are not in the position to attack the US with conventional warfare and almost certainly will not be for many, many decades- long after the current range of submarines, other military hardware and current group of people manning them are retired.

They did. There are laws on the books. Of course, the supreme court has decided that those Bush's Executive Order trumps those laws since he signed one that declared these exercises vital to national defense.

So basically Executive Order >> Law. It will be interesting if Obama misuses presidential power the same way.

It seems that all it takes is an Executive Order declaring something vital to national defense. Root to the Supreme Court?

My guess is they considered the science, not the Chicken Little hyperbole.

Environmentalists (as opposed to conservationists) depend on emotional appeal rather than science and rational analysis to further their agenda. Ergo, the court rightly dismissed their claims for the bullshit that it is.

Maybe you should have tried applying some of that rationality by reading the actual article instead of, I don't know, making shit up.

In its 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said the navy needed to conduct realistic training exercises to respond to potential threats.
The court did not deal with the merits of the claims put forward by the environmental groups.
It said, rather, that federal courts abused their discretion by ordering the navy to limit sonar use in some cases and to turn it off altogether in others.

My guess is they considered the science, not the Chicken Little hyperbole.

Environmentalists (as opposed to conservationists) depend on emotional appeal rather than science and rational analysis to further their agenda. Ergo, the court rightly dismissed their claims for the bullshit that it is.

Maybe you should have tried applying some of that rationality by reading the actual article instead of, I don't know, making shit up.

In its 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said the navy needed to conduct realistic training exercises to respond to potential threats.

The court did not deal with the merits of the claims put forward by the environmental groups.

It said, rather, that federal courts abused their discretion by ordering the navy to limit sonar use in some cases and to turn it off altogether in others.

They didn't consider the science at all.

Didn't consider it, or didn't spell out their deliberations in the ruling?

Merits, addressed in deliberations and deemed irrelevant do not merit attention in the written ruling.

I believe what he's saying, with his fingers appropriately placed in his ears, is "Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah...Environmentalists are poopyheads...Nah Nah Nah Nah... so long as the courts disagree with environmentalists, their decision is sound and I'll throw out specious justifications for it...Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah..."

no offence, but how are you qualified to make such a judgement? From what I've read from people who are actually qualified to have an educated say, it's widely accepted that the sonar does cause extreme damage to the marine wildlife.

Environmentalists (as opposed to conservationists) depend on emotional appeal rather than science and rational analysis to further their agenda. Ergo, the court rightly dismissed their claims for the bullshit that it is.

Seriously? And this sentence isn't emotional appeal with a lack of science how?

Jepson et al. reporting in Nature has stated that there is a "generally accepted link between some beaked-whale strandings and sonar use" [1 [seaturtle.org]]. More specifically, during a Spanish mid frequency sonar exercise 14 beaked-whales beached themselves. Spanish scientists autopsied 10 of the whales and all had damage similar to decompression sickness [2 [bbc.co.uk]].

There is some science regarding this issue. To completely throw it out the window without consideration, calling it bullshit, is more emotionally driven than the environmentalists you accuse in your post.

And as a side point, what would emotionally charged environmentalists have to gain by stopping sonar exercises around whales?

Wow, questioning the patriotism of people with a different view than yours, wonder where you learned that?

Since you claim the environmentalists want dead sailors and a weakened America, please cite your proof, or are you just name calling because you have no other reason to hate them aside from the fact you hate them?

You can make make up all the shit you want, but unless you have proof of something, at least admit you're spouting shit.

I mean, what if the USN is operating off of Iran or Venezuala for some reason and they fire off a torpedo and sink a carrier because the Navy could never find the sub as they had no practice?

What if space aliens use their mental powers to sink a carrier? What if Indian super undercover operatives attack US military outposts around the world? OMG time to increase your military budget! It could happen any minute... Now... Or now!

So the Navy does these vital training exercises, oh, I don't know, somewhere else? Somewhere where whales are not.

Someone said earlier in the post, when the sound of the Navy's high powered sonar was just like an F22 jet breaking the sound barrier 100 feet above your house (ie, loud enough to cause you physical pain and hearing damage) that if there were jets doing that, they would simply move. It's a little hard for the whales to do that, because apart from the fact that the sonar travels for hundreds of

My guess is they considered the science, not the Chicken Little hyperbole.

Environmentalists (as opposed to conservationists) depend on emotional appeal rather than science and rational analysis to further their agenda. Ergo, the court rightly dismissed their claims for the bullshit that it is.

Bollocks. The argument that 40 years of sonar use had not shown any problems would be thrown out by any reasonable scientific study. It's like saying it is impossible for humans to fly based on a thousand years of history. Stupid stupid stupid, as is to be expected from the outgoing administration.

Active sonar really fucks with whales. Others have posted above about evidence, but as you don't get it, hear it is in simpleton terms: Try driving a car at night with someone flashing multi coloured strobing lights in your eyes. You reckon you're no less likely to crash? Why do they make such a big deal about laser pointers being beamed at aircraft?

Maybe you think that the Navy is more important than whales, but I'm not American, so I don't give a shit about your paranoia or your need to flex muscle at no one in particular. Just because environmentalists are against it too does not mean it is automatically bad science, you primitive oaf.

"The most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals," Chief Justice Roberts wrote. "In contrast, forcing the navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine force jeopardises the safety of the fleet."

Chief Justice John Roberts said overall public interest was 'strongly in favour of the navy.' 'The most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals,' Chief Justice Roberts wrote. 'In contrast, forcing the navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine force jeopardises the safety of the fleet.'"

The Navy has even admitted that active sonar is harmful and results in deaths of marine mammals, but like with the EPA, investigations with facts harmful to the administration's opinions are erased [washingtonpost.com].

Thats why they put microphones in the water with a marine biologist listening constantly during testing and another on the bridge with binoculars looking for whales. Its why they observe a half hour before starting a sequence as standard procedure to make sure there are no marine mammals. They do what has to be done to ensure that there is nothing that can be harmed by the sonar in the vicinity.

how about test it on underwater divers... they signed up and it's safe for whales. We could try supreme court justices (with out air tanks though that might skew results)

What kind of device potentially damages animals in a 50 mile radius? Really think about that, this would be equivalent to allowing sonic booms at 1000 feet altitude near cities... and to heck with the broken glass and ear drums. The army has nothing that invasive, the air force has nukes or days of carpet bombing and supersonic aircraft,

how about test it on underwater divers... they signed up and it's safe for whales. We could try supreme court justices (with out air tanks though that might skew results)

What kind of device potentially damages animals in a 50 mile radius? Really think about that, this would be equivalent to allowing sonic booms at 1000 feet altitude near cities... and to heck with the broken glass and ear drums. The army has nothing that invasive, the air force has nukes or days of carpet bombing and supersonic aircraft, but they pick the same spots to train where there is minimal wildlife to harm and reuse it over and over.

I'm sure this is just a case of "boys with toys" making things bigger and louder because they can and pulling rank when asked to tone it down.

Well, there IS no device - short of a nuclear bomb - that would create the 50 mile radius damage you quote. Directed sound in water falls off at a rate of 20logR, meaning that at a distance of 10 meters you are down 20 dB; at 100 meters you are down 40 dB. At a distance of 10,000 meters - about 6 miles - you are down 80 dB.

An EXTREMELY powerful SONAR system might be capable of 250 dB ref 1 uPa within its beam angle. Meaning that at 10,000 meters and within the beam angle you would have a level of 170 dB. At that 50 mile radius? You would have 150 dB.

How much pressure is that? Considering that 10m of water is approximately 1 atmosphere (~193 dB SPL, or ~219 dB ref 1 uPa), that would be equivalent to having a ~15cm wave go over you.

Even closer, we see that at a range of 100 meters the level is down to 210 dB, meaning about the same as a 3m wave passing over your position underwater. How that damages an animal living IN the water in the open ocean I can't fathom.

I submit it is NOT the pressure at all; in fact, the pressure generated from the fluke of baleen whale is near 230 dB (and the pressure at 10m from an ocean freighter's prop is about 230 dB as well). If there IS an impact on marine mammals it is probably from the frequency and the sudden "appearance" of an audible frequency. In other words, like walking up behind someone and going "boo".

There is a tremendous amount of precedence for this hypothesis too; for example, blueback herring are highly sensitive to ~105 kHz signals and will scatter at the slightest noise in that range (which happens to be the third harmonic of the primary click range of bottlenose dolphins). You can blast those herring all day long with 230+ dB SPL at 200 kHz, or at 70 kHz without a problem, and get accurate biomass estimates; go near them with an ultra-low power (140 dB SPL) 105 kHz carrier and they scatter like leaves on the wind.

And yes, I was (for nearly 7 years) a real live SONAR engineer working in the marine and fisheries research SONAR world, and am still a practicing acoustician (20 years experience).

I don't think the Navy as a government organization or the president have anything relevant to say in the matter. It is what the marine biologists and the science they do says. If their science says that such operations definitely harm marine mammals, then the Navy should be required to take certain precautions before doing their exercises. If there is no conclusive evidence, or if the evidence is circumstantial at best, then there's no reason to stop the Navy from doing their thing until such evidence is found.

Now, if the evidence was indeed that strong, maybe PETA or some other animal rights group can and should bring suit against the Navy for harming the animals. If indeed the evidence is that strong, then this ruling is meaningless (the Supreme court didn't comment on the environmentalist's stance, which leaves the door wide open for more lawsuits). But until that time that the evidence really becomes that strong, I'm not sure national security should be jeopardized for the sake of a hunch or even an educated guess.

Hey - I'm all for protecting the enviornment. However, it certainly isn't the ONLY consideration in a case like this. I don't think that anything could be worse for the enviornment than hundreds of nuclear ballistic missles, and yet I certainly sleep better knowing that they're present as a deterrant against a nuclear attack.

Yes, we ought to care for the planet we live on, and that includes its ecosystems. It is in our own interest, and it also is generally the right thing to do. However, when the interests of humans collide with the interests of animals, you need to be realistic. A navy that is inadequate for the task of defending US interests encourages an attack upon those interests. Some have implied that submarines are unnecessary in the modern world - nothing could be further from the truth. However, a perfect army is one that never needs to fight a battle. When you have the perfect army then nobody messes with you in the first place. That doesn't mean that we should go around picking fights - but it is not in the interests of the US to fall behind either.

Breyer wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. He agreed that the district court failed to follow the law when it imposed the two restrictions at issue on the Navy's sonar testing pending completion of the environmental impact statement. In this portion of his opinion, he agreed with the Navy. In the second part of his opinion, he disagreed that the proper response was to get rid of the two conditions.

Stevens concurred in the first part of Breyer's decision and did not join the second part. In other words, he concurred in the judgment of the Court. In total, seven justices agreed with the Navy's position that the district court's order was not in accord with the law.

A very similar test to simulate what this high powered sonar would sound like to someone under water, for Bush and the crypt keepers on the supreme court.Stick their heads inside a 55 gallon drum and blast Metalica in the other end @ 400 db.

Stick their heads inside a 55 gallon drum and blast Metalica in the other end @ 400 db.

From CNN:

But environmentalists say that the sonar can hurt whales much farther than 1,000 meters away and that the noise created by the sonar "was like having a jet engine in the Supreme Court multiplied 2,000 times, compensating for water," attorney Richard Kendall told the justices.

I routinely spend large amounts of time at sea for the US Navy. The ship I am on doesn't have active sonar, but:
- We have a OS(W)or AB(W) topside at all times watching when we are underway watching for whales. The whale has the right of way.
- We're not allowed to intentionally encroach within 1km to a whale. Dolphins and similar are fast moving/smart enough to think we might eat them. Most whales appear to think we are a really big whale and seem to like coming over to visit.
- If our direction of travel is blocked by a whale, we must either steer to avoid or perform a rather unloved manuveur known as a 'crash stop'.
- If we are operating with another ship we must abort operations if a whale enters the area.

"Dolphins and similar are fast moving/smart enough to think we might eat them"

You wouldn't know it by the way they race with our ships. When I was on the Enterprise, the Dolphins (Porpoises perhaps?) would run right along side us, playing all day. They were fearless, swimming into our wake, under our keel, even running out ahead of us withe the carrier only a few yards behind. I can't speak to whale experiences, but as far as Dolphins went, the Big E had no "policy"... hell, as fast as we could go, they'd g

The only practical way when using a "laser" is to attach it to the head of another marine animal. Obviously they can't be sonar-sensitive mammals, so would have to be fish. They'd also have to be large enough to be able to carry these "lasers".

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Oh, thanks for pointing out that the Supreme Court has the right to interpret anything any way they want without review or consequence and as such we should all blindly reserve any negative criticism we may have regarding their decisions I had nearly forgotten that those with the authority to make decisions should be revered absolutely when they do.

I see! Since Congress decided to give the military funding, the President has the authority to issue any order he wishes without regard to to any other congressional statute. We should expect that if the Congress passes a law restricting the activities of government that the President's authority allows him to disregard that. It is great that justices who claim to be supporters of legislative primacy would choose to ignore the plain letter of the law and not require that the executive petition the Congress

Despite China maneuvering itself into third-world status for the purposes of the Kyoto Treaty, China isn't third-world. By definition, I don't think you can consider one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to be third-world.

But, yes, they aren't exactly hampered by lawsuits or demonstrations when they want to conduct military training.

True, and I ain't a hippie by a long shot, but it kills me that military advancement is always considered more important then environmental impact. Yeah it's a couple whales, who cares so long as our military is more stream lined.

I'm not pro-animal; I'm just anti-human superiority complex. For all we know, killing off all the whales could result in their food overpopulating, and so on and so forth. Of course, we won't know until we try, so let's go ahead and try so we can see just what kind of impact it

A very noble thought indeed, but unfortunately not liking war isn't the same as not understanding there are times for it, and preparing yourself for other countries which may not believe the same way.

Additionally, you have to remember that as far as our country's military leaders are concerned the people who choose to enlist in our military are more important than those who they may have to fight against.

t it kills me that military advancement is always considered more important then environmental impact

It isn't. Every military installation has a strong environmental office. Expensive cleanups are commonplace, and there is training to avoid the contamination in the first place. Combat training even gets scheduled around the habits of endangered species on the post.

Having been in a war, I'm definitely not pro-war. If you think war sucks, try being in one, it sucks even worse up close. But I definitely believ

The Court didn't address the environmental impact for good reason. In particular, no law governs this aspect of the Navy's environmental impact. So basically you're criticizing the respect of the rule of law.

"But even if it's against a real threat, it's obvious some put the lives of whales over the lives of our sailors. In fact I noticed that the far-whacko environmentalists are more anti-human than pro-animal. That's a lot of self-loathing there."

Questions:

1) Do you have any pets?

2) How much have you spent on them compared to people dying of starvation in 3rd world nations?

It's possible you don't have any pets, but you'll hopefully see my point - that many humans care more about animal welfare than they do abo

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, no matter how ill-informed it may be. You could, however, at least have gotten the quote [wikipedia.org] right: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

When the "fucking whales" go mad from all the pinging and start tipping over boats. Full of babies. American babies. Who will have white skin. All of them.Or when they start humping US submarines thus giving away their position when those evil terrorist Al-Qaeda submarines come along.

And haven't you seen that documentary earlier this year? It was in all theaters.You don't fuck with the big underwater creatures.Or they will come out, rip off the head off of the Statue of Liberty, rape it, and throw it in the middle of Manhattan.

And as soon as a spot opens, you don't think Obama will try and stack it either?

I dislike both the Democratic and Republican parties...If left to their own devices, each would destroy this country in a different way, either by overregulating it untill all the businesses leave or by being arrogant and pissing the entire rest of the world off. With the significant majorities in the House and Senate, the Supreme Court may be the only thing that stops this country from completely fucking i

The idea that anything labelled "national defense" automatically overrides the concerns of the local democracy (in this case the citizenry of California and Hawaii) would be in that category I mentioned above of "whatever ideology is in vogue". I don't happen to agree with that ideology.

"National defense" is why we threw US citizens of Japanese extraction into concentration camps in WW II, to our national shame.

"National defense" is why we wasted 58,000 American servicemen's lives in Vietnam, not to mentio